


Will You Weep for Me?

by KissTheBoy7



Series: Apollo Expired [2]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Suicide, spoilers guys theyre both going to end up dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 23:30:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissTheBoy7/pseuds/KissTheBoy7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is finding it hard to cope. Enjolras is dead as a doornail. Everyone is a little bit worried but nobody says much about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Will You Weep for Me?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if I'll write more of this verse but a few people wanted a sequel, so here it is. Enjoy the angst guys, it hurt to write.

Grantaire stares miserably into the bottom of his glass, and his own face ripples, staring back at him reflected darkly in the dregs of another beer.

Drinking solves nothing, as usual - but now it comes with the added bonus of Apollo's lifeless eyes, a razor of a memory embedded into his skin. When he drinks, he sees, and when he doesn't he torments himself,  _what if_ and  _if only_. Is it better to remember, bitter and painful as the memories still are to the touch, or to wrack his brain and slog through the uncertainties of the days and weeks preceding, crying to himself under the covers where at least nobody can dote on him like they do every time he deigns to leave his room?

He doesn't know. Grantaire doesn't know anything, not even his name, not even Enjolras because if he had known his Apollo half as well as he'd thought he would have seen it coming.

Nobody takes the bottle from him anymore. Even now, he reaches down woodenly and brings a half-empty bottle of some cheap booze Monparnasse had thought it funny to sell him and pours, pours, watches the amber liquid fill his glass up again with his pick of poison. That's what it is, poison - he should hate it now. He  _does_ hate it now and he lifts it to his lips to down half of it in a single swallow, burning a trail down to the pit in his stomach and spilling into oblivion, or hell, whichever one the hole in Grantaire's heart leads to nowadays.

Combeferre or Courfeyrac will be in to check on him, probably soon. He doesn't have the energy to check the clock. At the funeral, Mrs. Enjolras had slipped away from her husband long enough to press Julien's watch into his hand with a tearful "He would have wanted you to have it" and he'd nodded numbly and later that night he had smashed it to pieces against the wall, crystal splintering and leaving a fine layer of glass for his friends to find in the morning when they had come to make sure he hadn't done what they were all assuming he would.

_Don't you dare, R,_ the voice in his head warns in that stern way of his, but Apollo is not welcome in his head anymore because he is an impostor. The real Apollo, the spirit of him, has flown to the kingdom of heaven - the real Enjolras would probably give him a withering look just for thinking that. He'd never believed in heaven and hell and God and Satan or any of those things. Enjolras had believed in the innate goodness of people. In justice. In equality, liberty, in his own-

In his own ability to change the world.

Why?

No matter how many times he asked the question, of himself or of others or of the paramedics that he'd screamed and sobbed at as they dragged Apollo's limp form out of his death grip and into an ambulance, until they had to call someone in to sedate him because he had started making threats and no,  _no, he can't be dead, he's not dead, he would never do this to me you FUCKING LIARS WHY-_

_Why?_

There is no answer. There is no escape. All he can do is shudder and curl in on himself, cuddling a bottle, trying to forget but desperate to remember.

The second half of the glass goes down less smoothly than the first. He's had half the bottle already tonight. It's no Jack Daniels, but then, he hardly has any taste for the stuff anymore. How can he, when the smell of it is still stuck in his nostrils, soaked into the pair of holey jeans he'd worn that day kneeling in a growing puddle of sticky alcohol and vomit and God knows what else? At least there hadn't been blood, but then, red had always been Enjolras' favorite color. It might have been a more fitting way to go.

His thoughts tend to stumble and stutter in this state, too drunk to stand or to do anything really except sit here and burn himself out. Rationality is out the window. Eponine, she stopped texting him days ago after two weeks without an answer. Perhaps it was cruel to ignore her, but it was probably for the best.

If he did the obvious, if he really was a coward, and if Apollo in his head could not persuade her otherwise, he'd rather she hated him.

Because he'd loved Enjolras the day he died. Truly loved him, in every way, every aspect of him from the paleness of his near-white eyelashes to the spark in his voice that brought the most docile of crowds to passionate action. It was the worst curse that could ever have befallen a fragile art student, a recovering addict, a depressed cynic and a chronic self-harmer. Or, maybe, Enjolras himself had been the worst curse of all. If he'd never known him at all, at least he would never have seen the light to miss it. Now that his sun has winked out of existence ( _and it's your fault your fault your fault)_ he can't see anything, anything, anything but dark and nothing for miles, nothing and no one...

They all worry, but they really shouldn't. It's a waste of time and of energy. Grantaire is a waste of both of these things and many more. He is simply a waste that Enjolras had killed himself trying to help.

Secondhand depression is something he'd heard of before, but never taken the time to properly be frightened of. He tops off another glass and tips it back, wetting his throat, nearly choking as it spasms and threatens to send it all back up into his lap. Enjolras was never depressed, of course - it simply wasn't in his nature - but he had certainly grown to loathe himself, or he must have, and that can only be Grantaire's fault.

When one spends the majority of their time consoling someone who sees no good in anything, it's bound to rub off, just a little.

The bottle is empty the next time he bothers to check and he lets it fall from his fingertips, mind hazy with grief and thick with memory. It overwhelms him, the touch of Julien's hands and his lips, his fingers threading through his hands to soothe him. He can hear his voice still, a ringing, a song, and it buzzes in his ears until he can hear nothing else _, please don't leave me_ and of course he had, anyways. Always bold and ready to take the risks that no one else was willing to, always jumping that one extra step, but this time there had been nothing to catch his fall and his grasping fingers had met only air and Grantaire had stumbled in just too late for their fingertips to graze-

He's pretty sure he painted something like this, that second night, blackout drunk and breaking everything breakable including his skin, the red lines clawing their way up the outside to match the pattern he felt searing in his veins.

The first night he'd spent completely sober, and the third. Jehan had made a noise like a wounded animal when he'd seen under the poorly applied dressings and had handed him promptly over to Combeferre, striding quickly outside with a hand pressed over his mouth. There had been tears in his eyes, and Grantaire hated to see anyone cry.

But drunk, he is blind, and drunk he will stay.

He hates himself more than ever now, something that Enjolras had never been able to fix and now had ensured that it never would be, not that Grantaire was all that motivated to try in the first place. Every sip makes him want to vomit but only every tenth does it actually happen, or more, but lately it's less because he never really  _stops_ drinking long enough to flush it from his system and his eyes are red whether he's been crying or not, and he stops leaving his room and insists that he's fine, but he won't be when he runs out of alcohol.

There's another bottle stashed under his bed, thanks to Montparnasse.

There is also a little package of pills in his pocket thanks to Montparnasse, who didn't care that he didn't have money as long as he was willing to get on his knees and he does because Apollo should hate him and this is one way to prove it to him, watching way up high.

He'd never found a note, scouring the apartment and upturning books and papers and dustbunnies and everything until his friends had had to hold him down until he stopped shaking and screaming and throwing punches, one of which had blackened Bahorel's eye. Enjolras was gone in one jarring moment, and he hadn't been able to bear the sight of his body lying there in the casket at the funeral. His skin had been waxy and the blush applied to his cheeks looked unnatural and sickened him and all he could think while he stared was  _why_  but the answer never comes and the note does not fall from the sky and into his lap like he was desperately hoping it might.

Closure is not anymore possible than escape. In fact, it's even less so, in that Enjolras had smiled at him a fraction of a second before the life had left his eyes.

There is something terribly confusing about being left behind with nothing but a happy face and two empty bottles to remember.

One of which is right here, with him. The empty bottle of pills is warm in his palm, where he rolls it and squeezes it and tries silently to communicate with the dead because Enjolras can't just leave him hanging. He'd thought, those few happy weeks, that he was reshaping himself - making himself useful, making himself into something, someone, that  Enjolras could love or at least be fond of. What good was he now? He shakes it and it makes no noise, but he can imagine the noise it might have made, the clattering of gel capsules as they were hurriedly dumped into a sweaty palm and forced down the trembling throat of a man who had never deserved to die.

If anyone deserved to die in a puddle of Jack, it was Grantaire.

If anyone deserved to die at  _all_ it was Grantaire.

The clock is still too far away and his perception of time, as with other things, is so fragmented and twisted now that he thinks it has been hours since the last he took a sip. In reality it has probably been minutes, still too long - his throat contracts and his stomach heaves but he refuses to be sick, squeezing his eyes shut and arching his back in some pitiful attempt to settle himself.

The package in his pocket digs into his thigh, a welcome pain but persistent nonetheless. His head is pounding.

It's amazing how easy it is to procure cyanide tablets when you know somebody like Parnasse. They would be impossible to find otherwise - aside from the suspicion he'd face on a dozen different accounts, especially considering the information his therapist might give to any government officials that came prodding, it was pricey. And it was probably something Combeferre would have found out about if he'd gotten it legally, and it would have been snatched from his hands, and then they'd all be standing around  _looking_ at him with those sad, worried expressions and he'd scream.

Enjolras is gone, but somehow there are still classes to go to, and stranger still they all  _do._ Cosette presses her face to Marius' shoulder sometimes when they come to visit, her tiny frame shivering with grief, mostly from the dead way Grantaire speaks even when he makes a fuzzy attempt to smile just for her. Courfeyrac tells jokes that fall far flatter than usual, because Grantaire has lost the capacity to laugh, and the only time he'd tried it had sounded worse than his hollow sobbing at night when they all pretended not to hear him through the walls. He frowns afterwards, falling quiet, his eyes in his lap. All of them dance around him and then, once they arrive at a deadline or another obligation, excuse themselves because really, Grantaire,  _life has to go on._

Not his, though. His was destined to end anyways. Why not now?

These pills are not gel capsules. They're round and white and very clinical looking, which helps him to detach himself from the situation at hand as he rolls them around aimlessly on his desk. Abstractly, he remembers to hate that he's in his own apartment and not Enjolras', and he hadn't thought to bring any of his t-shirts with him to hold and bury his face in and smell just so he could remember a little more clearly, hurt a little bit more. It's addictive, this agony he's bringing on himself, but an angel is watching him and with every drink and every dark cloud of a thought he grows more real and tangible, more angry, more frustrated.

Angry, Enjolras can accomplish anything. If he's angry at Grantaire, so be it, so long as he returns to him.

He won't do it tonight, probably. This is just like last night and the night before that, or however many days it had been since the funeral and before. Everything is lost to the alcohol now, except for the ache in his bones and in his heart when he thinks of the flame Enjolras had lit in him years ago, stoked months ago and snuffed out little over a week ago. (But again, Grantaire doesn't look at the clock, much less the calendar.) Nothing can take that away. He doesn't know if he wants to see it go, either. Traces of Enjolras are so hard to come by.

But he will do it eventually. He will.

If Enjolras is the sun then surely he can follow in his shadow.

He promises himself this, and forgoes the glass, tipping the fresh bottle to his lips with the thought resonating in his mind.

_I will follow you._


End file.
